Foxtails
by Isshinkurosakis
Summary: I was rather ordinary, to begin with. I had a crazy little sister, and all I wanted was to become a certified chuunin medic so I could help Papa on missions. And then I decided to rescue a fox, and my life took an unexpected turn towards wild. Gaara/OC
1. Prologue: Suna as I Knew it

_ Prologue: Suna as I Knew It_

For the most part, I've always believed flowers to be overrated. Roses? Feh. Lilies? Puh-lease. Orchids? Not for me, no thanks. I've always tried to find beauty where others wouldn't normally look. Like in cactus flowers, which are so common around here people hardly give them a second glance. Dandelions, where every little weed-seed is a wish. And, especially, foxtails.

My mother, Um-ma, is most definitely to blame for this. She always loved them, having grown up in a world of lush vegetation near a lazy, clear river, with clumps of them growing taller than she was, in rich teals, greens, and maroons. Her parents, wealthy and always striving for perfection, thought them a scourge and were always trying to hack them away from their view of the river and from where they would spring up in their gardens. But the persistence of the so-called weeds by the riverbanks inspired Um-ma, who was a tiche rebellious by nature, and she began to hoard seeds in a beautiful leather pouch on her right hip so she could sow them in the garden when her parents were particularly irking her.

She would have never met Papa if not by a stroke of fate. She was a natural in the arts of medicine-making and chakra healing, and Papa, a medical ninja from Suna, had been sent to her country to learn of their medicines and techniques for use in the third great shinobi war. Not knowing the language, he wandered around and around asking for directions, but until he quite literally bumped into Um-ma, no one understood him. She spoke almost fluently because of her social status, and was able to tell him that the person he had been sent to learn from had recently passed, but she would be willing to introduce him to her teacher, and help tutor him herself. It was love at first sight, apparently.

Naturally, Um-ma's parents disapproved, but when Papa's mission ended, instead of staying behind, she eloped with him, so suddenly that when she arrived in Suna she had nothing but the clothes on her back and her pouch of foxtail seeds. It was just after the war had ended, and Suna's medical nins, mostly comprised of ninjas from my clan, had taken a great hit. The only ones left were my father, a cousin of his, and Gramma and Grampa (who were retired, so they only really helped those with the most severe of injuries). My father, knowing that my mother missed her home, helped her re-open the clan pharmacy, which had closed when the war began and its owners had been sent to the front lines, and taught her some of Suna's medical strategies in the brief period he was given before he was sent out on mission after mission. Times were rough, but the necessity of medicine and medical personnel never wanes, and so that little store and my father's many missions helped to keep us afloat when other families were nearly starving.

During the start of these bad times, I was conceived. In excitement, Um-ma rigged a makeshift irrigation system to the patches of ground on either side of the entrance to our little pharmacy (Suna Sky's Medicines, named for out clan, Sorabi, and our village) and tried her best to plant her foxtails. The first few tries didn't take, but at the start of her third trimester, the first shoots began appearing. Um-ma was ecstatic, and considered them a good omen.

Papa didn't.

"Why are weeds a good omen?" He asked her.

"They ahle pelsistent," Um-ma asserted, "They shourd not glow hele, but they did. That pelsistence is what I want oula chird to inhelit."

Papa still doesn't like like that explanation. I do.

I was born with deep red-brown hair, a blend of mostly Um-ma's dark brown and some of Papa's strawberry gold. Very nearly maroon, like Um-ma's foxtails. I was christened Miyako, beautiful night child, for the lovely night I was born in, and for my clan. Growing up, I always looked more like Um-ma. My thick, straight hair, my round face and almond eye shape, but I did have my father's gray-blue eyes. That much, at least.

I grew up happy, if introverted. I liked to read and play with imaginary friends. I would roam the alleys and explore by myself, using the ninja skills that I was being tutored in to reach places that other children my age, who weren't yet trained or who were orphaned and would probably not receive much formal training, could reach. I thought the other children were mostly rude and stupid, and so tried to avoid most of them when I could. The rest I just didn't feel like spending time with, because I always got so nervous when trying to talk and found it unpleasant, not realizing that shyness was normal. So I had no real friends, but I was okay with that, and my parents were okay with that, because it meant more time for me to study to become a medical nin as soon as possible, to help my father in the field. (my clan is famous for having abnormally large amounts of chakra, and for having very precise control of it, so we made excellent medics, and my path was chosen for me before I was born.)

I found a strange kinship with pets that families were abandoning so that they could afford to feed their children, and fed what ones I found that were still alive. More often, I found skeletons of those that died or were killed by the skinny strays that had roamed for years, bones picked clean by scavengers and bleached by the sun. I was four when I came across the first skeleton with a collar. It was a little cat, and the collar was a faded red. There was a tag that read "Buyo". I took the collar home and hung it on the bar where my curtains hung, so that I would look at it ever day and Buyo would know someone was thinking of him. Years later, by the time I finally stopped the somewhat morbid habit, I was unable to close my curtains, but I didn't mind. I liked moonlight streaming into my room, and I liked to imagine that the once-beloved pets did, too.

When I was about six, I caught a group of children around my age drowning kittens in a water barrel for fun. I chased them off, but there was only one left alive, a mostly-white calico. I cried as I carried him home and Um-ma cried when she heard his story (she was always the type to leave food out for the stray cats, and sometimes the dogs). We dried him off, and I expressed a desire to go and find the kids who did that to the little kittens and beat them up. Um-ma was shocked, and lectured me in Korean, her native tongue, which she had been trying for a while now not to speak around me (she thought this might help me make at least one friend). The words she gave me stayed with me the rest of my life.

_ "Never EVER be cruel to another living being for the sake of being cruel. You will be a ninja someday, so I know this will be hard for you, but without being directly provoked, it will make you meaner. To go seek them out and have vengeance will make you a worse person than them. Be kind, above all, my little night sky, no matter how much you dislike them or what they're doing. Always smile. Always be kind."_

Anyway, Buyo is now a fat and sassy shop cat. He keeps the mice out of our second-floor stockroom. I sing to him, sometimes, about what a good cat he is. Sometimes, he sings back. Sometimes, Um-ma joins us. I inherited her beautiful singing voice, luckily, and she had coached me a little on how to sing, but the only times I really sang were when she or Papa asked me to, or when I felt like singing to or with Buyo, so while I may have had a pretty voice, it was nothing I focused on much earlier in my life.

When I was seven, I had my first direct indirect encounter with Gaara of the Desert. He was sitting on a swing and I was wandering along in my usual fashion and I saw him look at me out of the corner of my eye, so I looked back and waved at him. He waved back, and then I jumped up into the second floor balcony of an abandoned house and that was it. Shortly after, I heard about the assassination attempt and the transformation of the shy boy on the swingset to a cold-hearted "monster". (believe it or not, I slept through the Shukaku's rampage. Honest to God I did.) Um-ma kept saying how wrong it was, for that little boy to not be given the amount of love and attention he deserved, and Papa kept saying that the Shukaku should never have been sealed in him in the first place, or in anyone, for the sake of our village having an "ultimate weapon". So, I made up my mind to be the one person to be kind. I already walked past his little cactus greenhouse every morning while going up to Grampa's office for lessons. I had often seen him there with his uncle Yashamaru, but had never really said anything before.

The first time I did was the next morning, and it very nearly frightened me out of ever doing it again, the way he stared at me as I went past. I just said "good morning" quickly and then once out of his sight ran the rest of the way to Grampa's office. I may want to be kind, but I didn't want to die.

The stares eventually went from blood-curdling hatred to major annoyance and suddenly to complete and total ignorance of me. After a few times of this I decided I didn't like it. I was doing him a favor by greeting him each morning like he was a normal person and I was going to be acknowledged for it, thank you. So I leaned in the door-jamb one morning for several minutes, until he glared at me over his shoulder, and asked me calmly if I would like to die. I just smiled, gave my "good morning!" and left. Yes, I did still fear for my life at times, but now I just figured if I died trying to be nice it would be a nice thing to go on my headstone. And I only ever had to do that again twice before he picked up that he had to be acknowledging my existence every morning when I walked past. Our relationship evolved into me walking in at seven sharp each morning, walking past his doorway and saying "good morning," while his eyes tracked me impassively from one side of the frame to the other, letting me know that yes, he did see me, and therefore I could keep on walking as there was no need to bother him with my useless presence for any longer than what was necessary. I was happy with just that, though that little bit of quirkiness and my intensive medical training meant that I really didn't have any friends besides cousin Hanako, who was two years my senior and took lessons with me, ergo, no friends, really.

Lessons were a pain. I went in early in the morning and left in the early evening most days when I was younger. I would be tested on anything and everything on any given day, and Hanako, would try to help me where I was struggling. Or, she did, until she became a genin and stopped getting lessons from Grampa and moved on to lessons from Gramma. I knew I wasn't as good as her. My taijutsu was okay, my genjutsu a little better, but I sucked at ninjutsu. Not because of chakra control, but because I had a "stutter" of sorts. In sequences of more than three hand signs (and sometimes in sequences of three hand signs) I would trip up on one of the transitions, and botch the following hand sign. Grampa assured the judges for the genin exams that as a medic I wouldn't really need to know more than the standard shadow clones, transformation, and replacements, and so I was still able to pass at age ten, just in time for my life to take an irreversible turn.

See, Um-ma gave birth that year. Nine days after my birthday, on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth of January, my little sister Haru (Korean for "day", in order to stick with the naming theme I started) was born. She had strawberry blonde hair and amber brown eyes. Her first word, at eleven months, was "Miyako". Her second was "butt". Both would reflect lifelong obsessions.

Example. When I was twelve, I got my long hair cut into a highly stylized bob. It started at my chin on the left, and spiraled down to the bottom of my breast on the right, with very straight-cut, heavy bangs. Haru wanted her hair to look just like mine, but didn't know her lefts and rights and accidentally got it cut in the opposite direction, plus she forgot the bangs, but she was so happy no one ever told her otherwise. (though Um-ma started pinning her foremost locks behind her ears, so they wouldn't get in her way.) I loved her then, and I love her now, but she was rather tiring to live with when she was little. When she wasn't busy acting like the little child she was, she was acting very Haru-ish, which was not much different. She never really matured out of her behavior, come to think of it. The only positive thing about this is that come nightfall she is always asleep at a reasonable hour, as she expends so much energy existing day to day that she just crashes.

Not much else happened between then and the summer in which I was thirteen. I kept a journal and started writing in it in upside-down, backwards Korean, inspired by some foreign anatomist whose work I had to study but whose name I could never remember, so no one could ever read it. I spent more time running the shop when I wasn't being assigned to missions with other genin teams. (as a medic, I had no specified team – there were so few of us to go around at the time that even though Hanako and I weren't fully certified yet, we still went out on missions where medical assistance might be required.) I babysat Haru a lot, which usually meant she just followed me everywhere and talked at me a lot. I still visited Grampa every morning, because Gramma had just been given an official spot on the Council of Elders and so I had to go see her in her office every morning. This meant I still wished Gaara a good morning as I walked by, and his eyes still followed me impassively. I liked to pretend that the animosity that had once been there was gone, but I was nice and not suicidal, so I never stopped to try to extend our little ritual. Life was just pretty normal.

Until I decided to intervene on one of nature's cruel realities, and saved a fennec fox from an eagle...

.:FINITE:.

First thing of Naruto in so long. I am currently Narutarding so hard right now you have no idea.

I was mostly inspired to do this by a lack of true gems in the Gaara/OC category. I know there are some there, but the bad fics, in my opinion, often outweigh the good in most fandoms (especially in OC pairings) and so I decided to try my hand. At the very least, it'll be better than _My Immortal _and _Twila da girl who was in love w a vampir._ (IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THEM, GO READ THEM.)

Anyway, please leave a review. First -official- chapter will be coming shortly. :)

Also, may I just say _FUCK YOU FANFICTION TEXT EDITOR FOR NOT LETTING ME USE TABS OR FULLY UNDERLINE MY TITLE, BECAUSE THAT WOULD HAVE MADE MY FORMATTING SO MUCH NICER._


	2. Chapter 1: Bummer Summer

_Author's Note: I have received a review noting that Sun's accent was difficult to decipher. Because I'm very nit-picky about story flow, I've decided to just put a small key to a Korean accent up here for each chapter where Sun plays a role. If you've not noticed any issue, then don't mind me up here, and just continue on to the story.  
><em>

_Sun's accent is light, and somewhat of a cross between Filipino and Japanese. Her L's and R's are switched in writing because they make the same sound in Korean, like in Japanese, and her F's have been replaced with P's, similar to a Filipino accent. Some of the words may come across frightening to read because of H's that have been added, but those are there purely for the sake of maintaining the integrity of the vowel the H follows. For example, the word "are". To just switch the R with an L would turn the word into "ale", which is an alcoholic beverage, thus rendering my sentence senseless. Adding the H allows the A to maintain it's integrity within the word. This works best when thinking of it phonetically, as "ah-le". Take out the HL, re-add your R, and there is your original word._

_Example sentence decoding:  
>"Oh, I've been pine. The shop's been quiet ahrr day, so not much to do..."<br>Replace the P with F in "pine", remove the H and switch the R's with L's in "ahrr", and we have...  
>"Oh, I've been fine. The shop's been quiet all day, so not much to do..."<br>__Ta-da! Our original sentence.  
><em>

_Also, this accent thing is rather phonetic, so if you sound it out it might be easier to understand._

_Happy reading! _

_Chapter One: Bummer Summer_

It was a quiet day, this Thursday, in Suna Sky's Medicines. Then again, it was quiet most Thursdays. It was the kind of day where Sun just sat behind the counter of her little store, reading a book, or watching one of her Kdramas on the mini TV until a customer happened to wander inside. Today, it was the latter. She was resting her chin in her left hand, angled in a way that she faced both the pharmacy door and the television. There was sunlight streaming in through the open back door behind her, lighting up her dark brown hair, which now held some salt-and-peppered gray hairs. Her brown eyes were riveted to the drama unfolding in her little box, listening intently to their singsong words, incomprehensible to almost everyone else in Suna.

The bell above the front doors gave a merry jingle as the right door swung inwards. Sun looked up from her stories and smiled as she recognized the visitor. "Oh, Hanako! How ahle you?"

The teenage girl smiled, her cheeks pressing her bottom eyelids up to crowd her baby blue orbs. "Nothing much, Auntie Sun. Have you been well?" She responded, mussing her dirty blonde bangs back with the rest of her shoulder-cropped hair.

"Oh, I've been pine. The shop's been quiet ahrr day, so not much to do... Oh!" Sun's pretty little mouth formed an O, almond eyes widening momentarily, "I suppose you want to tahrk to Miyako, yes?"

Hanako nodded. "Yeah, about the chuunin exams."

Sun smiled. "Oh, good. She's been so anxious to hele any sort op news... Just a moment, I think she's in the stockloom..." Sun quickly opened a small door to a flight of L-shaped stairs, and began trotting up them, calling, "Miyako! Miyako!"

Enter Miyako. The young teen was curled up on the floor in a patch of afternoon sun that was streaming through the window, a fat calico with a faded red collar nestled between her arms. Her spiraling bob, chin-length on the left and mid-ribcage length on the right, was mussed, long locks crumpled and stretching from the right side of her face, which rested on the floor. At the sound of her mother's voice, Miyako began to stir, and lifted her head up to look even more right, towards the staircase. She rested her chin on the floor lazily, and called back, "What, Um-ma?"

Sun appeared at the top of the stairs, in the open door frame where they ended. "Hanako is hele, dalring. She has news about youl chuunin exams." With the news passed, Sun took her leave, her sandals twunk-twunking back down the stairs.

Miyako jumped up with a yelp, gray-blue eyes wide with surprise. She quickly combed her deep red-brown hair with her fingers, making sure her bob was all in order, then pulled down her tight camel-colored tank top some more, adjusted the three-quarter-sleeved fishnet top underneath it, then made sure her loose chocolate-colored mid-thigh shorts were hanging correctly, and then checked that the bandages around her knees weren't unravelling. The cat she had been snuggling with gave her an annoyed one-eyed glare, and then settled himself back down. "Sorry, Buyo!" Miyako chirped as she ran barefoot down the stairs, into the main body of the shop.

At the first floor, she came skidding to a stop just past the counter. "What's the news, Hanako? What'd they say?" She begged, a grin pressing her round cheeks and crinkling the corners of her almond eyes, the same shape as her mother's, but larger.

Hanako, standing and looking very official in her standard chuunin getup, Suna headband tight around her forehead, gave Miyako a sympathetic smile. "Sorry, Miya, but it looks like it's a no-go this time."

Miyako's happy smile slowly slipped off of her face. "But, but, why? I've been working so hard! They sent you when you were my age! Did I say something to upset Gramma and Grampa?"

Hanako shook her head emphatically. "No, no, no. It's nothing to do with you. The Kazekage has been planning an invasion of Konoha, with the new Ota village. And you know Gramma and Grampa are against it. The Kazekage wants more medic nins, sure, but you're the only one who is of a certifiable age and rank as of now, and so withholding you from the chuunin exams won't stop the invasion plan, but it's a form of protest Gramma and Grampa want to do right now. Mama and I won't be going to view the matches, and we also won't be partaking on missions for the next few weeks. The same with your dad, when he gets home. And the same for you."

"No missions!" Miyako blurted.

"No missions," Hanako replied, seriously.

"Shi bal!" Miyako blurted, earning her a hard thwunk upside the head with a hardcover book that Sun had grabbed from somewhere. She rubbed the newly forming bump, grumbling to herself disagreeably, as Sun began to lecture her.

"Radies do NOT speak rike that! Whele did you realn that kind op ranguage!"

"You dropped something heavy on your foot, and you wouldn't tell me what it meant, so..." The hardback made its way towards Miyako again, but this time she dodged it and hid herself behind Hanako.

"I do not say things rike that! But besides, you shourd be supportive op youl famiry, and stand behind them! I know you wanted to be cehltipied, but this is something biggel than us and what we want."

Miyako frowned, but she knew her mother was right. She didn't agree with the invasion plan when her grandparents had first told her of it, but she had just been so excited to become a chuunin, and along with that, a certified medic nin, that she hadn't allowed the thought of not going to cross her mind. She huffed, and made her way to the back door, where she pulled on her black ninja sandals.

"I'm gonna go for a walk, okay?" She said. As she stood, she pulled her kunai and shuriken holders from a cabinet and strapped them to her left thigh, cinching her shorts tighter on that leg. Once that task was done, she tied on her Suna headband, just above them.

"Don't go pinding tloubre, now," Sun pleaded. Miyako gave a nod without looking back to her, and then vanished, with a puff of sandy dust. Sun sighed and hung her head, then looked at Hanako. "Goodness me, I think I just glew pour new glay hails."

.::.

Miyako shuffled along Suna's mostly empty streets, dragging her feet and kicking the occasional rock. Most people were inside about now, avoiding the mid-afternoon heat, but Miyako was just a little bitter right now. She had been so looking forward to this moment for years. Heck, people had started leaving to go there already, and now she knew she wouldn't be going with them. Gaara hadn't even been in his little cactus room this morning, and when she asked Grampa about it she'd found out they'd left yesterday afternoon! She wondered who would look after the cacti, but then remembered that they were cacti and would probably be fine for quite a while on their own. (she had still sneaked in before she went back home, to give them some water, anyway.) She'd expected maybe to see him and continue the good-morning ritual in Konoha. It had felt odd this morning, not having his seafoam eyes stare at her as she walked from one side of the doorframe to the other. Almost like she was missing the voice of a friend, saying, "Yeah, go do your shit that you have to do today. Get on with it. Hurry up."

She made it to the outskirts of the village without encountering anyone else, and saw the open village gates beckoning. She started to stride through, when one of the watchmen shouted, "Hey, Sorabi! Where you off to!"

"Nowhere, really!" She shouted back at them, "Just roaming! I'll be back within the hour!"

"We'll hold you to that!"

Miyako smiled up at the jounin, and then continued her walk, now following the outer perimeter of Suna's large protective wall. There was nothing much to see out here. The wind was mild today, only kicking up a few dust devils as she walked by, and hardly rumpling her hair, considering how hard it normally blew. She saw a few buzzards circling off in the distance, and knew that something had died off in that direction. There was a scorpion that crossed her path, but she just hopped over it. At one point, she found sidewinder tracks.

She first spotted the fennec when she was nearly halfway around the wall. She thought it was odd, for a fennec to be out at this time of the day. Weren't they nocturnal or something? But it was just sitting there, glaring up at the sky, snarling at an eagle flying overhead. The eagle swooped, and just as it looked like it was going to snatch up the little fox in its talons, he darted off to the side, and chattered angrily at the bird. Miyako chuckled. He was teasing the huge bird. What a brave little feller. She turned to continue on her walk, eyes on the ground ahead of her, so as not to step on something dangerous.

From behind her came a horrible screech. She whipped around to see that the eagle had caught the fox, albeit at an awkward angle which must have been excruciatingly painful for the little fox. The three front talons of its left foot had caught and ripped through the flesh of his lips on the left side, before settling in his left eye socket, the back had pierced a hole through his ear. The fox was screaming and flailing in evident pain and terror. Miyako cried out and ran over, as though there would be something she could do.

The fox's struggle shifted him enough that the eagle's talons lost their grip, gouging his eye from its socket and ripping right through his ear. The fox went into a fifteen-foot free fall, and he landed with a surprisingly soft pat on the sand, completely still. Miyako ran over and checked his vitals quickly. Still breathing. Heart still beating. He was alive, but knocked unconscious by the fall. She scooped him up, and started running back to the village gates. His wounds were not mortal, if she could just help him...

.::.

An hour later, and Miyako was sitting behind the counter, in the same seat her mother had been in before, watching the store. Her little patient was in a blanket-covered cat carrier, still conked out. She checked on him occasionally, lifting the blanket to look through the wire door. She knew he was a wild animal, but with his missing eye, and his stitches, she couldn't just toss him back out there, and had decided to make him a nice, warm, dark place to wake up in.

She had stitched up his lips as best she could, along with his ear and the deep gash on his small cheek, but there would most definitely be scars. She had sealed his eye the way she had learned to in her classes, but felt bad that she didn't have any synthetic materials to make the missing eye less obvious. She felt that the sutures she had done were at least decent, but that would be up to her father or Hanako to judge. Buyo was napping next to the cage, curious about the smell but too fat and sassy to be more nosy.

The shop door opened, and Sun walked back in, accompanied by a little girl who looked hardly older than a toddler. With a pudgy face, amber eyes, and strawberry-blonde hair, she was the image of cute, with her forelock barrette'd back behind her ears and her bob an exact reverse of Miyako's. Her dress, which hung to her ankles, was a red brick color, with the sign of the sand printed across her torso, little arms soft with baby fat covered to her elbows with fishnetting. A large cream collar was currently obstructing the bottom half of her face, as she had been hiding her face from the winds, which were now picking up. She looked up, and gave Miyako a sunny smile. "Miyakoooo!" she squealed, and began running towards her elder sister.

Miyako grinned and scooped up the little girl as she came within her reach. "Hey, Haru! How was lessons today?"

"Lessons was good. Grampa taught me how to fix papercuts today!" Haru showed Miyako her right forefinger, which had a faint white line across the pad. "He said, he said, he said I'm doing, like, really, really good!"

Miyako grinned and hugged her little sister closer. "Yeah, you sure are!" And she was. At around three and a half years old, this was a very large step for her.

A few chirping cries started to come from the cat carrier, and Miyako quickly leaned forward and lifted the blanket to look in, squishing Haru against the counter. Haru shrieked and wriggled herself around so that she could lean her front half over the counter and look in, too. "Oh, a fox! You got a fox!"

"I didn't get a fox, Haru. I saved him from an eagle." Miyako narrowed her eyes. Her patient was now awake, but still seemed very groggy. His little chirping mews were muffled, and probably from discomfort and pain. "Mama, do we have any pain medicine that would be okay for him?"

"I think so, ret me rook..."

"You still got a fox!" Haru howled, upset that she had been momentarily ignored. "Can I touch it!"

"You most certainly cannot!"

"WHYYY!" Haru screeched. "WHY CAN'T I TOUCH YOUR FOX!"

"Because he's feral!" Miyako snapped back. She had meant to say wild, but whenever Haru got screamy she usually word-souped her sentenced in her rush to make the screeching stop. Besides, Haru probably didn't even know what she meant, since "feral" most likely wasn't in her vocabulary yet. She started correcting herself. "No, not that, I meant-"

"Feral?" Haru said quizically, pushing herself upright. Her nose was wrinkled, the left side of her mouth pulled up, and her left eyebrow lowered. "Well, that's a stupid name." Her expression reverted to normal, and she looked at Miyako, who was now holding back giggles. "You still didn't say why I can't touch him, though..."

.::.

Another three hours later, and Miyako was really resenting rescuing the little ingrate.

Sun had found some medicine that would dull his pain and was safe for non-humans, but it would have to be taken orally, and since he was a wild animal, he probably wouldn't just take it willingly (since not even tame ones did that very often), so Miyako had carefully crushed the correct pill dosage into a very fine powder and mixed it thoroughly with a can of cat food, put it in one of Buyo's wet food dishes, and set it in the front of his cage for him.

No, rephrasing required. She had opened the cage and had gone to set it in, but ended up dropping it in the front when the little shit darted up and started biting her fingers. Once she'd quickly retreated and shut the cage door, he'd gone back to the back of the carrier, where he'd made the blanket she'd put in for him into a nest, and refused to touch the food. Every time she opened the cage door to try and push the food to him, he ran up and bit her fingers. Her index seemed to be his favorite, and it was now covered in little bleeding punctures and scratches. Only the sheer determination to make him accept her nursing kept Miyako from racing to take antibiotics and soak her hand in hydrogen peroxide (being a medic, she understood in great detail all of the nasty things that could happen from the slightest wounds and, understandably, it made her a tiche paranoid).

So she was now sitting there, staring at her patient (who was mewling pathetically with pain) with a killing expression, muttering to herself about what she could do to make him eat his medicine. She could tranquilize him and then force-feed it through a stomach tube. Or she could go to the vet and pay an arm and a leg for intravenous medication suitable for a fox of his size and weight (with not many pet-owners in Suna anymore, the vet's office milked any clients for every penny possible). Or she could make him into a nice little pelt. After all, human treatment (especially the human feeding part) meant he couldn't be released back into the wild again. Besides, Haru had inadvertantly named him, too. Feral. Fitting name for the little bastard, if Miyako said so herself.

Anyway, she couldn't really think of anything. Wet cat food alone should be enough to entice him. But nooo, all he wanted to do was curl up in the back of the carrier and be a wimp, or bite her fingers whenever she opened the door-

An idea struck Miyako. But it was a terrible idea. She shouldn't do it.

But it was for the little fox...

NO. SHE COULDN'T DO IT.

SHE WOULDN'T DO IT.

Miyako snarled to herself for being too damn nice all the time and opened up the cage door. She snatched the dish of cat food, but not before the fox landed two more hits on her right index finger. She examined the wounds after she shut the cage door. One new set of punctures and a new set of scrapes. Wonderful.

She looked at the cat food, and set the dish on the floor. She winced, and then stuck her right index finger in it. Her most bitten-up finger. In smelly, bacteria-filled cat food. Miyako whimpered. She could basically _feel_ the infection setting in. This was wrong on so many levels. All of her grandfather's lessons about keeping wounds as clean as possible, and about people who didn't and lost fingers and toes and limbs and got flesh-eating bacteria and died came rushing to the forefront of her mind. Quickly, she shoved them away, opened the cage door, and thrust her hand inside.

As predicted, the fox bit her.

As she also predicted, he quickly realized her finger was covered in food, and began to lick it off.

Miyako let out a sigh of relief. Now he would get his medicine, and, maybe, perhaps, she hoped, he would quit biting her fingers when she reached inside.

As she continued to feed him, he ventured out further and further to meet her fingers, until he was crawling into her lap and licking her finger, despite having finished off the food. Miyako smiled, and began petting his hind end gently with her left hand. He responded by suckling on her finger, placing one paw on top possessively. He did this for several minutes until he drifted off to sleep, whereupon Miyako began petting the entire length of his back.

He was cute, with his oversized ears and sucking on her finger (which she decided didn't need scrubbing, hydrogen peroxide, antiseptic, and bandaging immediately after all) and whatnot, and he would probably be oddly charming, with the funny scars that would pull the left side of his lips back in places. He would always look a little snarly, a little grizzled. Feral did suit him.

Plus, he'd probably look really cute on a leash.

.:FINITE:.

A NOTE: Sun is Korean, and therefore she has a light Korean accent. No, those aren't a bunch of typos I forgot, that's my unfortunate attempt at putting a light Korean accent into writing. If you know some way I can improve it, I would love to hear from you.

Now, then, yay, chapter 1!

I really enjoy Haru's character, I'm just sad she didn't have a bigger role to play in this chapter. She will in others, though. Don't you worry.

ALSO, if you have a tumblr account, I would (shamelessly) suggest following me. I often post previews on there, or my friend makes story-related gifs that end up there. I dunno. Just a suggestion. But it you're interested, my tumblr is tristeza565 .tumblr .com, without the spaces, obviously.

Please leave reviews! I would love to hear what everyone thinks!

(also, knowing what I'm doing right encourages me to do more. Another thought. xD)


	3. Chapter 2: We Five Kings

_Author's Note: I have received a review noting that Sun's accent was difficult to decipher. Because I'm very nit-picky about story flow, I've decided to just put a small key to a Korean accent up here for each chapter where Sun plays a role. If you've not noticed any issue, then don't mind me up here, and just continue on to the story.  
><em>

_Sun's accent is light, and somewhat of a cross between Filipino and Japanese. Her L's and R's are switched in writing because they make the same sound in Korean, like in Japanese, and her F's have been replaced with P's, similar to a Filipino accent. Some of the words may come across frightening to read because of H's that have been added, but those are there purely for the sake of maintaining the integrity of the vowel the H follows. For example, the word "are". To just switch the R with an L would turn the word into "ale", which is an alcoholic beverage, thus rendering my sentence senseless. Adding the H allows the A to maintain it's integrity within the word. This works best when thinking of it phonetically, as "ah-le". Take out the HL, re-add your R, and there is your original word._

_Example sentence decoding:  
>"Oh, I've been pine. The shop's been quiet ahrr day, so not much to do..."<br>Replace the P with F in "pine", remove the H and switch the R's with L's in "ahrr", and we have...  
>"Oh, I've been fine. The shop's been quiet all day, so not much to do..."<br>__Ta-da! Our original sentence.  
><em>

_Also, this accent thing is rather phonetic, so if you sound it out it might be easier to understand._

_Happy reading!_

_Chapter Two: We Five Kings_

Feral ended up being relatively easy to tame. Within two weeks, he was sleeping with Miyako in her bed and walking like a little show dog around their yard, which resided between their house and their store (the property had once been a rental stable, with a small barn in front, the exercise yard in the middle, and the farmhouse in back. The stable had long since moved to a larger premise, though, and the barn had been converted to the pharmacy and the exercise yard into a very large lot). His wounds also healed surprisingly fast, and after the two weeks Miyako was able to remove his stitches. She assumed that he had an excellent immune system, and was young and strong and very healthy, but Sun interacted with him cautiously because of his quick healing and tameability. Finally, one morning, she approached Miyako and told her to be very careful with Feral if she wasn't going to get rid of him.

"Um-ma, why?" Miyako had questioned.

"He is a fox spilit." Sun had answered gravely.

Miyako had quirked her left eyebrow with a skeptical expression. "How do you know?"

"He winked at me."

No matter how much Miyako tried to say that a one-eyed fox couldn't wink, Sun insisted that he had. And though she began to treat him with more affection over time, she also started leaving him offerings in the form of sake and steamed rice. Miyako tried not to let him have the sake, but when she wasn't quick enough and he did get into it, she discovered that a drunken fox was extremely entertaining.

Haru loved Feral. She often picked him up and stole him away when Miyako was distracted. She taught him how to "die" and how to point his nose at his rear when she asked him "where's your butt?", much to Miyako's disdain. She also asked Miyako if she could have her own fox all the time, never really listening when Miyako explained that her acquiring Feral was an accident.

Her grandfather was less than pleased the first time Feral accompanied Haru and Miyako to his office. She was just there to drop off Haru, but her grandfather was sure to mention something about the wild being left in the wild, and that he was probably a kitsune and had tricked her into caring for him. Eventually, he joined the "offering cult", as Miyako began to refer to it, when he, too, insisted that Feral winked at him one morning as he followed Miyako out the door. Miyako had had an uncharacteristic fit at that point, very vehemently insisting that he was a one-eyed fox _and therefore could not wink_, but when that didn't deter him she at least convinced him not to leave sake.

So after three weeks Feral was chubby and sassy, tame, and very loving to everyone. His missing eye never seemed to bother him, although Miyako was the only one who could safely touch the left side of his face at any time, as he had a tendancy to snap at other people who surprised him from that side. He loved to sleep in the sun and on Miyako's lap, tolerated Haru dressing him up in doll clothes, and, eventually, enjoyed jumping up onto their father's shoulders to get a higher view of the world.

.::.

It was another normal, hot afternoon in Suna. So lazy that the wind was barely a breeze. Everyone seemed to be holed up in their homes, trying to escape the heat. And so naturally, this was the day that Sun had to go run errands and Miyako had to watch the shop.

She had her chin on the counter, and was lazily writing in her journal, her upside-down, backwards Korean so well practiced that she wrote it just as well as her regular handwriting. Feral was asleep, curled up not very far from her face, having tuckered himself out annoying Buyo, who was perched on top of one of the rows of shelving, watching the door in his serious, cattish way, the tip of his tail flickering up and down, up and down.

The door swung open, the bell chiming. Feral gave a sigh and a little fox grumble and in his sleep covered his big ears with both little, furry paws. Buyo's head lifted, and he straightened up his regal bulk. Miyako looked up from her journal. Her eyes widened, and she sat bolt upright and slammed the notebook shut. An ear-to-ear grin split her features. "Papa!"

Her father closed the door behind him, his standard jounin getup dusty from the desert wind. His forehead protector, tied around his waist, looked more scuffed than usual. His strawberry-blonde hair, usually slicked and neat, was tousled from the wind, with some neck-length locks hanging in his face. His face itself was serious, with high sculpted cheekbones and a stern jaw, the corners of his eyes lined from a lifetime of squinting in the intense sun. He hardly looked like his eldest daughter, tall where she was petite, light-haired where she was dark, but in their eyes their kindred spirit showed; kind orbs, soft grayish-blue in hue. He smiled in greeting, the corners of his mouth lifting, but no more than that.

Miyako leapt from the stool and bolted to him. She flung herself into him with no hesitation, her head crashing into his chest. He gave an "uff" as some of the air was knocked from his lungs, but hugged his daughter back. "Good mission?" Miyako asked, looking up at him. He gave a curt nod and ruffled her hair. He was a man of few words, preferring to save them for when he might need them most.

From the counter, Feral roused himself and gave a high-pitched growl, unhappy that his nap had been disturbed. Miyako's father, now just noticing him, suddenly looked alarmed. "Fox," he said, his voice low and just a bit raspy from underuse.

Miyako detached herself and giggled sheepishly. "Yep. Feral."

"Why."

Miyako began walking back to the counter, explaining as she went. "Well, I was walking around outside the wall—" here she ignored the stern look that her father gave her (he disapproved of her walking about outside the village) "—and I saw him get scooped by an eagle, but it had a bad hold and dropped him, so I saved him."

Now at the counter, her father extended a hand to Feral, who wagged his tail and licked the man's fingers. He picked up the small fox, and examined the scars on the left side of his face: one scar near his nose that started at the bottom of his jaw and stopped at the top of his muzzle, another near the end of his mouth, stretching into the closed eyelid where his left eye had once been, and another which just missed the corner of his mouth and also went into the left eye socket. All of the scars on his face had the same diagonal slant. The scars on his mouth had caused his lips to pucker a bit on those places, so his gleaming, needle-sharp canines and little shining carnassials were just visible. He touched the left ear, inspecting the diagonal scar which went from about the middle, close to the fox's head, up and out near the top corner. "Traditional?"

"I'm not a vet, and I don't exactly do much with ninken. I didn't want to overload him."

Her father set the fox down, and nodded. "Good."

Miyako's chest puffed up with pride. Spoken compliments from her father were hard to come by.

The door opened again. Sun and Haru walked through, still shielding themselves from what must have been a sudden gust. Haru was the first to blink the sand out of her eyes. "Papa!" She squealed, pattering up and affixing herself to his left leg, her little limbs wrapped tightly around his calf. He grinned patiently and reached down to ruffle her hair in the same way he had Miyako's earlier. Sun restrained herself better than her daughters, walking up and touching his shoulder. He gave his wife a kiss and touched his forehead to hers, his smile broadening to show teeth for just a moment.

"How was the mission, Nisshoku?" Sun asked. She received the same nod that Miyako had, though this time, Nisshoku pulled a scroll from one of the pouches on his thighs. Haru shrieked with excitement and promptly let go of his leg, thunking on the floor and rolling around in a fit of excitement.

"He, he has that, that, that scroll! The one for, for the food! The fruit food!" She stood up quickly, pulling herself up on the counter so her eyes peeked over at Miyako. "The fruit food, Miyako! Fruit food scroll!"

Nisshoku chuckled at Haru's antics, and spread the scroll on the countertop, bit his thumb, wiped the wound across the scroll, then quickly healed the wound with chakra. A burst of smoke covered the counter, but quickly cleared to reveal several very large Honeycrisp apples, a huge watermelon, multiple oranges, some tangerines, white peaches, and nectarines. Miyako quickly snatched Feral as he tried to inch closer to the food, her own mouth watering. Fruit was a precious commodity, here in Suna.

Sun quickly got to work transporting the fruit to the house, but not before letting the girls both choose one piece to eat immediately. Miyako chose the most succulent looking of the apples, and Haru took a tangerine because it was "Haru-hand-sized". Nisshoku helped Sun to carry the load to the house, exchanging a few words with her as he did (emphasis on "a few"). Haru climbed onto Miyako's lap, peeling her tangerine little bit at a time. Miyako bit into her apple, juice spraying into her mouth. Her eyes rolled up in pleasure. "I haven't had an apple in _so long_." She moaned.

"Don't talk with full mouth chewing stuff." Haru scolded, still peeling her tangerine with intense focus. Once finished, she split it in half, then placed one half on the counter and took one of the little triangles and popped it in her mouth. "Good!" She cried out.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Miyako said with a mocking tone. Haru stuck her tongue out at her, and swallowed her little section with a gulp.

"Miyako?"

Miyako's eyes darted down to meet Haru's amber brown. "Hmm?"

"I'm glad Papa's home."

.::.

Their dinner table that night was livelier than it had been in some time. The grandparents joined them for a meal of chicken katsu curry and rice. They played the let's-try-to-get-details-out-of-Nisshoku game (which was always a popular, but frustrating, one). Miyako was heckled into singing. She did so grudgingly. And she noticed that Feral stared at her with a strange intensity throughout her song. That was the first time she had really taken notice of anything strange. By all means, he shouldn't have looked up from his little dinner. He shouldn't have maintained unbroken eye contact for so long. But he did. And this was when Miyako had a little, nagging thought. An obnoxious little one that she ignored, saying that maybe her mother and grandfather were right.

They went to bed that night full and happy. Miyako slept soundly, Feral cuddled in her arms. She awoke the next morning to find that her window had been opened. She'd thought that was strange, because she was sure she hadn't left it open, but she thought nothing more of it and went about the rest of her day, doing some rigorous training with her father and then recovering for several hours. Feral stayed by her side the entire day, acting as he always had, though the closer it got to nightfall, the stranger he began to act. Finally, when Miyako began to haul herself up from her position on the couch to go to sleep, long after everyone else in the house had, Feral bolted for the back door, and scratched frantically at it. She sighed heavily, and walked over. She opened the door for him, and he went halfway out, then stopped, and looked at her.

"What?" She moaned. Miyako was very achy and therefore also irritable. She wanted her bed. She didn't want to follow Feral outside. But eventually, in the interest of just getting him back in faster, she slipped on a pair of sandals and did.

She definitely wasn't expecting him to jump over the side fence, into the alley next to it.

Her aches and pains suddenly forgotten, Miyako jumped the fence after him. "Feral! Come back!" She shouted. He kept running, a few of her paces in front, occasionally looking back over his shoulder, as though to make sure she was still there. She didn't know what was going on. Feral was usually happy to never leave her side. And she loved him, at this point, and wasn't letting him go. So why was he running off? And acting so strange about it?

They ran until they reached an empty, moonlit park, in one of the abandoned neighborhoods. No one lived in this area anymore; the homes had all been too expensive, and many people moved out of their own accord to avoid foreclosure. The park in the middle, here, was mostly in disrepair. Two of the three swings were broken. The monkey bars were bare metal, the paint sandblasted off by Mother Nature's hand, some of the bars broken or missing entirely. The slide had caved in near the middle, the stairs up bowed or missing. Feral ran straight for it. Miyako followed, but once she reached the edge of it, she skidded to a stop. There were five men in the park, hidden in shadow, all conversing in low voices. Feral noticed her stop, and slowed himself, looking back to her, halfway between her and the strange men.

Miyako could see her breath in the cold desert air. It might be springtime, but even in the summer, desert nights were bitter. The five men turned their heads to look her way. Feral didn't move. Everyone was eerily still for a few moments, between them. A cold gust came from behind Miyako, and her flesh broke out in goosebumps. Finally, a deep, somewhat rough voice grudgingly said, "Well, kid, I guess you can do things right sometimes."

Miyako's throat went dry, and she tensed to run the other way, but suddenly, there was a loud pop and a cloud of smoke where her little Feral was. She froze, wide eyed. The wind picked up again and dispersed the smoke. And there, in the moonlight, stood a tall young man in straw sandals, loose black shorts, a loose, gauzy cream top with elbow-length sleeves, and an open flak vest. His hair was shoulder-length and shaggy, sticking about in all directions, and Miyako could see a fennec's tail, the top covered by the shirt. He jutted his hips forward, and rested his left hand on the back of his left hip, the position confident and cocky. "Whatever made you doubt me?" He said, his voice playful. Somewhere between tenor and baritone. He turned back to Miyako, and she could see the scars on his face. The missing left eye. A Suna headband around his neck. "Miyako," he cooed, his voice gentle and inviting, "come closer! You've been nominated. And now you're here to meet the Kings."

Miyako stepped forward cautiously. "Nominated for what? Kings of what?" And as she reached Feral, she gave him a quick punch on the arm. "And what the fuck? Why didn't I know about this sooner!"

"Secrecy makes for better trickery." Feral-the-man replied, his smile mischievous.

Feral-the-man moved his left hand from its place on his hip to the small of her back, and firmly guided her to the circle of men. Nearer to them, she could make them out. A man with hair like Feral's, smoke curling from his nostrils, a reddish birthmark shaped like the Suna symbol over his left eye. A man with long, thick white hair, and a serious expression, examining wicked metal claw attachments on his fingers as though they were normal nails, and a headband around his upper arm, a simple snowflake that Miyako couldn't place a village name to. A man with red hair and a large under-bite, emphasized by the strange metal jaw armor he had on, long tooth attachments jutting up, with the Konoha leaf displayed on both sides. A man with tan hair in a long ponytail, a goatee, a very square head and strange, narrow, staring eyes, with a metal plate displaying Kumo's symbol affixed to the armor on his chest. The last man had black hair peppered with some silver-gray, his forehead protector covering his eyes, the symbol of the Mist etched into the metal plate. The first man, the one with the smoking nostrils, stepped forward.

"We are the five fox Kings," he began. He didn't open his mouth much when he talked, and his muttering voice was also deep, so it required some effort to catch his drawling words. Bass baritone. "And my boy here tells us you have potential."

"We've come to see if that's true or not," snipped the man with the long metal claws, tossing a sneer in her direction. He leapt her way, and began to stride around Feral and Miyako. She could now see the white coat with the fur collar, the white pants, the white shinobi sandals. His yellow eyes looked over her critically. Miyako couldn't help but think he'd be much more handsome if his expression wasn't so pinched, as though he'd just smelled something awful. He stopped in front of her, and his hands went behind his back. She could hear the claws click and scrape as his fingers curled. "She's common," he stated over his shoulder to the other kings.

"That's fine, LongClaw," groaned the one with the under-bite. He should have a lisp, but for some reason, it was absent. "We judge by voice and ability, not how pretty they are, Your Prissiness."

The white one, known as LongClaw, rounded as though to pounce at the red-haired man, his black-tipped white tail fluffed angrily. The red-haired man gave a cocky smile and lifted his arms as though to invite the challenge. Miyako could see a leather strap running over his jaw, just below his upper lip. She deduced that he must use that as resistance for his tongue, to keep the lisp out of his voice. Clever, really. The tan one with the strange face stopped them, though, fixing them both with serious looks. Or maybe they were just regular looks.

"LongJaw, this isn't the time to be antagonizing LongClaw. We have serious matters to attend to." His voice was a smooth bass, like liquid dark chocolate.

"Can we continue yet?" drawled Feral's father, irritation evident in his voice. When no objection rose from the others, he shrugged at Miyako and gave his head a small shake. "We are the five Kings of the fox Council, and we represent the five clans of ninja foxes. I am Dragon, King of Fennecs." He paused, and gave a fixed look to the others. The white one, LongClaw, huffed loudly.

"LongClaw, King of Arctics." He snapped. Miyako wasn't surprised. Aside from the white, his tenor voice was like ice.

The one with the under-bite gave her a playful salute. "LongJaw, King of Reds."

The large man with the strange eyes gave a half-bow. "ThunderBark, King of Tibetans."

The last one remained quiet for a while longer, his face in her general direction. The others looked to him, but did not prompt him to say anything. Finally, he openly smirked at her, revealing jagged, sharpened teeth. Chills ran up Miyako's spine. Feral visibly shuddered. "NoEyes. King of Silvers." He drew out his words, his voice a very deep bass, with a somewhat gravelly quality to it.

Dragon turned his attention back to Miyako, and continued. "We have not had anyone sign the contract for many decades. We work mainly with genjutsu users, who use their voices to control it. They also need to have excellent chakra control, and enough chakra to share with their fox counterpart, who will need your chakra to help you maintain the genjutsu." Dragon gave a snort, and Miyako could see the pits of his nostrils glow. "We haven't found all of these qualities bundled together for quite a while. But we're a patient, long-lived lot, so we've waited. And now, we've heard about you."

Miyako figured she had to be going crazy. But she'd play along with it for now. "So… what happens now?"

"We test you, of course!" laughed LongJaw.

Miyako blinked, and looked to Feral-the-man for guidance. He gave her a reassuring grin. "Sing," he said.

"You don't need to sing much, just a few lines of something." ThunderBark added.

"We'll be able to tell if there's potential in you just from that." LongClaw quipped.

Miyako swallowed hard, and started nodding for no reason other than that she was essentially being commanded to sing for a group of strange men who were going to judge her not-warmed-up voice based off a few lines of some song. Okay. No need to be nervous. She took a few deep breaths, being sure to fill her lungs from her diaphragm, and exhale fully, before settling on a few lines of a song, and just letting them go before she could think about it.

"_In the moonlight I felt your heart  
><em>_Quiver like a bowstring's pull.  
><em>_In the moon's pale light, you looked at me.  
><em>_Nobody knows your heart."_

LongJaw stopped her before she could continue. "I like her voice."

"Mezzo-soprano. Good range." ThunderBark mused, stroking his goatee.

"Not very trained…" muttered LongClaw.

"That's easily fixed. My boy — Feral, your name is, now? — will be an excellent teacher for her, and an excellent partner." Dragon countered.

Attention turned back to NoEyes. They waited patiently for his answer. After a long while, he chuckled and nodded. "As much as you all know I hate to give Dragon's boy credit for anything, I will admit, he's found us one."

"So, what is the count? Four to one?" Dragon said happily, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. "Or will you be joining us, LongClaw?"

The Arctic King rolled his eyes and tossed a clawed hand dramatically into the air. "Well, fine, count me in, then. I still think none of you have taste."

The other foxes ignored him, and instead, all placed their hands to the ground. Summoning symbols scrawled out over the sandy surface. With a puff of smoke, a large scroll appeared. Dragon took it, and opened it to an empty place where Miyako could sign. He bit his thumb and scrawled a character at the top, then laid it flat, and beckoned Feral and Miyako over. He tapped the symbol at the top, and explained, "This means that you are primarily a Suna nin, and, therefore, while you can summon any fox, only the Fennecs can reverse summon you. You are primarily ours, and we are primarily yours."

Miyako nodded again. She was doing a lot of nodding. But this was a weird dream, and she wasn't going to open her mouth and add to the strangeness. She bit her thumb, ignoring the pain, and signed her name. Once she was done, Feral-the-man did the same, and signed next to her. The scroll rolled itself up, and then Feral-the-man stood, lifting her with them. "Okay. Now we Bond."

Miyako didn't like how that sounded. "B-Bond? What do you mean, Bond?"

Feral-the-man just gave her a grin, his scars giving it a wild — feral — quality, and held a hand out toward his father. Dragon took a kunai from a holster clipped onto his vest, and handed it to Feral-the-man. With no hesitation, the fox-man sliced open both palms, and then did the same to his exposed forehead. Miyako gasped, and reached forward. He took her hands gently with his bleeding left, and twisted them, palms-up. The expression he gave her was concerned, despite the blood dripping down his face.

"This will only hurt a bit. The cutting is the easy part." And with that, he sliced her hands, pushed her bangs back, and cut her forehead. His blood made her bangs stick to the main body of her hair, and they didn't fall over the wound, even though they wanted to. The wounds stung. She wanted to heal them up.

Feral-the-man held the kunai out, and Dragon took it from him. The Kings had all gathered around them, watching with a sort of twisted curiosity. Feral-the-man pressed his palms to hers, weaving their fingers together. His dark brown eye sought out her gray-blues. He took a deep breath, and pressed his forehead to hers, slice covering slice.

Feral-the-man was right when he said that the cutting was the easy part. She wanted to shout in pain, but all she could do was hiss. Something foreign felt like it was swirling into her through her forehead and her hands, burning her as it went. Probably infection, part of her brain said. But no, this was something more than that. It was orangey, she knew, even though she couldn't see it, and seemed to be swirling about in her, looking for something. It finally converged upon her stomach. It felt as though her organs were physically being pushed aside to make room for this whatever-it-was. It seemed to build there, until there was a spring of it. It was creating more of itself. She could feel it rushing along her chakra paths, setting her blood on fire, burning her from the inside. Then it fell back, and everything went black.

.::.

Miyako startled awake, suddenly sitting up. She was in her bed, dressed in pajamas. Feral was curled up on the pillow, next to where her head had been, now yawning and lifting his head to look at her. So it was all a dream. It hadn't felt like it toward the end. And her dreams weren't usually so vivid. She could still feel the bite of the desert night on her skin. She sighed, and reached to pet him, but suddenly froze upon seeing the white line across her palm. She felt her cheeks go pale. Her eyes flickered to Feral. Who last night had been Feral-the-man who had done something to her that had hurt like flames. She stared at him for a while, his one brown eye staring back, before he gave her a wink.

.:FINITE:.

This is my big milestone. A third part to a story is always my hardest to get out, but here you all go.

The lyrics that Miyako sings are from _Princess Mononoke._ It's from the English version of the movie, but the song is just so beautiful.

Many thanks to Lieutenant Winter and ShiningHeart of ThunderClan for their reviews~!

And thank you to the lovely she disenchants for being my beta~!

Reviews are always appreciated. Hopefully I'm doing something right~!


	4. Chapter 3: Soldier Boy

_Author's Note: I have received a review noting that Sun's accent was difficult to decipher. Because I'm very nit-picky about story flow, I've decided to just put a small key to a Korean accent up here for each chapter where Sun plays a role. If you've not noticed any issue, then don't mind me up here, and just continue on to the story.  
><em>

_Sun's accent is light, and somewhat of a cross between Filipino and Japanese. Her L's and R's are switched in writing because they make the same sound in Korean, like in Japanese, and her F's have been replaced with P's, similar to a Filipino accent. Some of the words may come across frightening to read because of H's that have been added, but those are there purely for the sake of maintaining the integrity of the vowel the H follows. For example, the word "are". To just switch the R with an L would turn the word into "ale", which is an alcoholic beverage, thus rendering my sentence senseless. Adding the H allows the A to maintain it's integrity within the word. This works best when thinking of it phonetically, as "ah-le". Take out the HL, re-add your R, and there is your original word._

_Example sentence decoding:  
>"Oh, I've been pine. The shop's been quiet ahrr day, so not much to do..."<br>Replace the P with F in "pine", remove the H and switch the R's with L's in "ahrr", and we have...  
>"Oh, I've been fine. The shop's been quiet all day, so not much to do..."<br>__Ta-da! Our original sentence.  
><em>

_Also, this accent thing is rather phonetic, so if you sound it out it might be easier to understand._

_Happy reading!_

_Chapter Three: Soldier Boy Comes Marching Home_

Days turn into more weeks. Feral would stay a fox through most of the day, and would be a man by night, tutoring Miyako's voice in the abandoned neighborhood where they had both signed the contract. Feral was a strict and finicky teacher, but Miyako was a quick learner, and together they accomplished much. By the end of the first week, Miyako was able to cast and hold the disorienting, paralyzing genjutsu that Feral demanded she be able to, by lacing her voice with chakra. He taught her to activate the well of fox chakra he had implanted in her during their bonding ceremony, she learned that he had a well of human chakra in him from her. She learned to predict his voice, harmonize, cross voices with him. He pushed the limits of her voice until he deemed it versatile enough.

Her third week, he showed Miyako her first Guhimo.

He warned her ahead of time, so she would not drop the genjutsu. They were only visible to the human eye through that illusion world, after all, and a fox couldn't maintain that kind of genjutsu for too long on their own. That Guhimos were foxes who had passed a millennium, and who's tails split into nine. This made them lose their minds, and they would become warped shadows of their former selves, preying on human chakra, hearts, and livers. Their bodies were sealed, but an adept fox could call up a spirit from its slumbering body to do their bidding with fox chakra, in tandem with the genjutsu, only so long as they kept a tight grasp on it. A rampaging Guhimo was a force to be reckoned with. But Feral assured Miyako that one Guhimo was nothing for him, that he could control three on his own, and, with her help, hoped to someday control five between the two of them.

She was still horrified when she saw it, though.

Feral assured her that she'd become desensitized to them with time. Miyako told him that she feared he would turn into one. He'd only laughed.

"Miya-girl," he'd said, "That day is still a long way off. I'm only 273 years old." Here, he'd shrugged. "And not every fox turns into one. The elders didn't. And old NoEyes didn't."

Speaking of King Silver, over those weeks Miyako had noticed some uncharacteristic patches of mist hanging around. Sometimes she swore that they were in the shape of a fox. But she tried not to think about it too hard. In fact, she tried not to think about it at all.

By the end of the month, she could summon a Guhimo, with Feral's assistance. The mission-embargo her clan was holding turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as it meant she could sleep in late after being up most of the night. She helped her father in the hospital on some days, her mother in the shop on others, and sometimes walked Haru to and from classes (little girl was still working on paper cuts… her attention span, as described by her grandfather, was that of a squirrel to the negative twentieth power). Miyako often took this time to sneak into the cactus room, to give them a bit of water and make sure the flowering ones were still looking nice. She wondered how the chuunin exams were going. How Gaara was doing. She would never realize how much she actually missed the sinister boy until she stepped into that room. She shouldn't, by all means. He had never even said "good morning" in return.

That was, until the morning he came back.

.::.

Walking Haru to her grandfather's office in the morning was a killer job for Miyako. Especially when it was a morning after a long training night with Feral. Her throat was almost throbbing from the effort she'd put forth, trying to give Feral more power, more volume. She was afraid she might lose it if they kept this up. But Haru never cared. She always just ran in, still pajama'd up, at seven-thirty in the morning and jumped onto Miyako's bed and on Miyako screaming about how Miyako needed to get her lazy butt awake and take her butt to the shower so they could get both their butts to Grandpa's special room.

It was why she was striding out to the shop, her hair freshly dried and perfectly set, with Haru holding her left hand and Feral trotting along with his little red leash clipped on to his little Suna collar at eight o'clock this morning. The only reason why.

Sun was reading a book when they entered the shop, only giving the girls a glance as they kicked off their slipper-sandals to exchange them for their ninja sandals. "Terephone prum youl glandpather," she said, "he's leceived crealance to terr us about how the chuunin exams went."

Miyako looked up, her expression curious. "How many pass?"

"Just one, prum Konoha. And the invasion was a pairuhle." Sun paused, and set down her book. "The Pourth Kazekage is dead."

Miyako's eyes widened with shock. "Wh-what?"

"The sound man, Olochimalu, kirred him. Tricked us." Sun went back to her book. "This news came a pew days ago. He tord youl pather as soon as he could. The lemaining genin should be alliving back today."

Miyako nodded. Their Kazekage… dead? Who would be in charge? She stood. Haru leaped up with far more enthusiasm. She obviously wasn't comprehending what was going on. "Who is in charge?"

"The ehrdel councir, por now."

Haru yanked on Miyako's arm. "Let's go!" She quickly darted behind Miyako, firmly placing both hands on Miyako's rear. "Move your butt Miyako!" The elder girl sighed, and allowed herself to be pushed along.

"I'll be back soon, Um-ma!" Miyako called over her shoulder as Haru pushed her out the door. Sun waved goodbye, nose still in her book, only looking up after her girls when the little bell chimed as the door closed.

.::.

Eight fifteen. Miyako was stretching and yawning outside of the Kazekage building, feeling like she had forgotten something. What could it be? It certainly wasn't Haru – she was her grandfather's problem, now. The cacti? No, she only watered them every three or four days. What – oh. Miyako rolled her eyes and shook out her shoulders to loosen them up. She had forgotten to say good morning to Gaara. Who wasn't here. Who hadn't been here. Another reason she hated the early mornings. She always forgot that he wasn't here, and it felt wrong to leave the Kazekage building without having said her good morning.

The wind picked up for a moment, rustled her clothing and tousled her hair and Feral's fur. The little fox himself was sitting politely on the end of his slack leash, looking spiffy in his leather Suna collar and miniature flak vest, unruffled by the early morning hours. Miyako hated him right now, but decided to take a leaf out of his book and nap for most of the day today in her favorite spot on the stockroom floor. And with this thought, she set off for home.

She had about two thirds of the way back home completed when she noticed the first of the genins returning with their jounin teachers. One of ten teams sent. She saw two more teams by the time she was halfway home, and another three by the time she was nearly a third of the way home. Six teams. Four more. She wondered if she would see the Sand Sibling team…

With only two streets left, it looked like she wasn't going to. She sighed and accepted defeat, and, naturally, this was when they came walking down the street, heading in the direction from which she came, their teacher following them. They looked especially ragged and tired. The skin on Gaara's forehead was split, even. She'd never seen the slightest sign of injury on him before… But now wasn't the time to ponder. She was going to get her ritual. "Good morning!" She called as she walked by.

He looked up at her, and Miyako knew something was different. The impassive, cold eyes were now staring, unsure, lukewarm. She found she couldn't look away, the difference in them was that startling.

Then he opened his mouth, and said, "Good morning."

Miyako was, frankly, shocked. Now she almost openly gaped. That wasn't something she was expecting.

But do you know what else she wasn't expecting? The light post.

Just two steps after he said it, Miyako collided with the metal post and stumbled backward from the force of hitting it. She turned and looked at it. Who had put this here? Maybe she should have been looking where she was going. Her eyes flickered over to the team of genin, the only other people in the area around who could have witnessed it, in the hopes that maybe they didn't see. Or hear how the post rang from its collision with her skull. No such luck. Kankuro was openly laughing, and Temari was sniggering at her. Gaara, though, looked confused and maybe a titch concerned. But his siblings were laughing still. Miyako felt her cheeks turn a dark red, and she quickly moved to the side and picked up her pace going back home, Feral bouncing along beside her in that way that she knew meant he was amused. Little jerk, wasn't he supposed to be on her side?

Miyako kept up her quick march the whole way home, breezed past her mother, ignoring her concerned questioning. She kicked off her sandals, and then marched up the stairs into the stockroom and plunked herself onto the patch of floor where the sunlight from the window was currently touching. Feral put a paw on her knee, giving her a big, amused foxy smile. She glared back and flopped onto her side. "Shut up, Feral," she snapped, "you don't get it. That's the first time he says something to me that isn't a death threat and I go and make a total moron out of myself."

Feral just wagged his tail and began panting. Miyako knew him, and his actions. He was laughing at her, too. She growled and covered her head with her arms, wrapping them around so her hands grasped the back of her head. "You're a jerk."

The fox continued to laugh, but eventually moved up closer to Miyako and stretched himself out flat on the floor. He was asleep before her, and Miyako, unable to stay upset with him, reached to him with her right hand and gently stroked his fur until she, too, fell asleep in the sunlight.

A few moments later, Buyo hopped up from the stairway, his bulky body making surprisingly little noise. He strode over and observed the two. Miyako, hand resting on Feral, who was frog-legged on the hardwood. He gave a little catty huff, and then stepped over Miyako's legs so he could wriggle under her arm and curl up against her chest. He stretched a paw forward and placed it gently on her cheek, then rested his chin on that extended leg, joining the other two in sleep.

.::.

A day and several hours later. Miyako was reluctantly dragging herself to the Kazekage building to pick up Haru. She had managed to avoid the task yesterday, and her father had volunteered to accompany Haru this morning when she refused (the first time Miyako had willingly missed her ritual), but she couldn't get out of it this time. Her father was working, and her mother was making some over-the-counter remedies. There was no one else to do it.

She slinked through the doors of the Kazekage building, clung to the wall, avoided all eye contact as she made her way up. She was irrationally fearful that somehow everyone here knew of her blunder. Or at least heard of it. Kankuro was something of a gossip, and Temari never missed the opportunity to latch on and spread a good tidbit.

On the floor where the elevator stopped (what was even the point of an elevator that didn't take you up the last few floors, anyway?) she got off and picked up Feral so she could easily cling to the wall and sneak through the hall. The door to Gaara's greenhouse was open, as it usually was when he was there. She swallowed hard, and took a deep breath. Do or die time. Her walk picked up speed, until she was moving just below the awkward trot-walk gait, and she rushed past the doorway.

"Wait."

Miyako stopped as though she was about to run into a wall. It was amazing how much a voice could change once it lost that I-really-really-really-want-to-kill-you tone. He sounded just like any kid his age, though maybe more unsure. And a bit lonely. She was standing in the doorway before she realized it. Feral was struggling to climb onto her shoulder, and she helped him get there. "Yes?"

He still looked rather impassive. Miyako figured that was partly because he had been for so long (also it might be hard to show certain emotions without eyebrows). But there was a softer edge to him, and a definite change in his aura. After all, she was holding eye contact with him and didn't feel as though she was in danger of being crushed at any second. And his eyes… they didn't look hard or wicked. It was entrancing, really.

His head tilted just the slightest bit, and she could see his brows knit a touch. Concern, maybe? "Are you all right… after…"

Miyako turned bright red and shifted her gaze to her sandals. "Yeah… only bruised my pride, is all."

"Is that why you didn't come this morning?"

She looked up again, eyes wide in surprise. "Y-you noticed?"

The corners of his mouth twitched up for a millisecond. If she had blinked, she would have missed it. "It's become a ritual, has it not? I'm very used to it."

Miyako felt herself start to grin. "Yeah, it has, hasn't it? I would be lying if I said I didn't miss it, kind of…"

It was quiet for a moment. A sort of half-awkward silence, before Gaara spoke again. "You're here to pick up your sister, correct? The fearless one?"

Miyako's brows furrowed. "Fearless?"

"She dropped something earlier this morning and it rolled into here, and she wasn't afraid to come in and get it despite my presence."

"She's more than a little oblivious, but I don't know if I'd call that fearlessness…"

"I would. And I believe that you are, too."

She almost choked. "Me? Oh, no no, I'm definitely not. I'm terrified of lots of things."

"Yet you're nearly as brave as my siblings when it comes to interacting with me. Or braver. During my worst, I could hardly feel your fear."

She rubbed her cheek self-consciously. A light blush was coming up in both. "I just never pushed my luck was all, did what I thought was safe…"

His head lowered into something of a small bow. "Regardless, in hindsight, I appreciate your gestures."

The silence settled over them again. Though it felt a little less awkward this time. But Feral shuffled on her shoulder and gave a small yap. Miyako sighed. "I should probably go… I still have to pick up Haru, after all…"

Gaara seemed to backtrack a bit in his mind. Miyako realized he was probably about to ask about Feral. "Of course… I've enjoyed this, though. And, if you ever have a moment, could we talk like this again?"

Miyako smiled. "You don't need to ask."

This time, the little twitch stayed. He looked nice with a smile on his features, even if it was a miniscule one. "What is your name? I forgot to ask it earlier."

She brushed a stray lock from the short side of her hair back. "I'm Miyako."

.:FINITE:.

Sorry this took so long. I got stuck for quite a while at the end. Hopefully it doesn't suck too bad and I actually still have readers.

Thank you very much to Eyp (ilu raily here have a nice surprise whenever you're on next), THEYCALLMESPITFI, Lieutenant Winter, blueanimefreak, windwolf1988, Vivid, and KeeLer Mimi for your reviews! It's thanks to you guys that I'm not losing interest in writing this.


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